valunvesthere (< 20)

Transparent Aluminum Part 2 of 2

2

There is a manufactured material called transparent aluminum and one of the ingredients in producing the material is aluminum oxide plus a bunch of others is heated at high temperatures (more on the subject is randomly listed links to transparent aluminum below).

"Transparent aluminum starts out as a pile of white aluminum oxynitride powder. That powder gets packed into a rubber mold in the rough shape of the desired part, and subjected to a procedure called isostatic pressing, in which the mold is compressed in a tank of hydraulic fluid to 15,000 psi, which mashes the AlON into a grainy “green body.” The grainy structure is then fused together by heating at 2000 °C for several days. The surface of the resulting part is cloudy, and has to be mechanically polished to make it optically clear."

If it's smelted it's metal, if it's baked it's ceramic. But in this case if aluminum is baked at 2000 °C the aluminum is smelted while the other elements are baked.

This still brings the question - Is transparent aluminum a metal or ceramic?